But this really isn’t news. Cannibalism among lobsters in captivity or in a trap is common. Those little bands on a lobster’s claws at your favorite eatery are to keep the lobsters from killing each other, not from pinching the chef.

And read the actual reporting on the experiment that Mother Jones uses to declare the cannibalism epidemic. Basically, the scientist tied a juvenile lobster to a string on the bottom of the ocean so it couldn’t escape and then filmed what happened. When adult lobsters took advantage of the tethered youngster for an easy snack, this became news or science or something. The author of the paper offers this caveat:

Oppenheim’s discovery, by his own admission, is at best preliminary: The real proof that it’s a lobster-eat-lobster world down there will come only after he dispenses with the tethers and finds a way to see whether a juvenile lobster can actually escape the nighttime cannibals if given the chance.

Usually the alarmists cite polar-bear cannibalism as the poster-child of degenerate feeding caused by global warming, but it seems we’ve moved on to crustaceans.

Maybe we can catch cannibalistic lobsters in Maine and airdrop them to the cannibalistic polar bears in Alaska? Problem solved!